Anniversary
by Nightheart
Summary: Written for The Spy and the Silencer's anniversary; Trowa goes back to an old battlefeild to remember his fallen comrades and discovers that he is not the only one who remembers.


The sun was bright, glaring in the chill air that seemed sharp and crystalline, like clear glass. The snow was gone, as it had been then, but the ground was still frozen and the scrubby grass clinging stubbornly to the hard packed soil was still brown and dead from the winter that had just passed. The few trees struggling to grow in what had at one time been a blood-soaked battlefield were like bare brown skeletons. The land was holding its breath, waiting for spring.

A young man walked alone, his steady footsteps crunching on the frozen grasses as he made his way through the dead field towards what had many years ago been a field of the dead. He had grown tall, but his face was the same tearless mask it had always been, his eyes were the eyes of a man who had lived to see a thousand deaths and never seemed to regret any of them.

It was around here somewhere, he thought. His journey had been undertaken a little reluctantly on his part; he had put it off for the past two years after the battle against the Barton Army, telling himself he was too busy with the circus to go or that Catherine really needed him for the show that week. Now he had firmly decided that it could wait no more; he would go to the place and he would say his goodbyes and make his peace and lay it all to rest. Years ago he had witnessed the wholesale massacre of the rebel troop who had raised him... to be precise, he had seen the finishing off of the very few loyalists of the rebel group; Nanashi had mercilessly and remorselessly killed the soldiers who had turned coat to join the Alliance. It was the anniversary of that day in the year After Colony 190; the day that the last of the true rebel company had been killed off by the Alliance in a massive sweep of their main base, the day he had found the body of his captain, the man who had taken him in, dead outside of his mobile suit, the day he had exposed a desperate traitor. Such events were momentous enough to be the defining moments in anyone's life and Trowa really was not so very different that the memories of what had happened did not impact him.

It was odd, now that he looked back and thought about it. The code that Nanashi had been taught, the code that had spelled out death for his turn-coat comrades in the rebel company... "destroy the enemy before him," that code had been ignored for the first time in his life as a soldier on that day. He had been faced with an enemy, a very clear and obvious enemy, and he had stayed his hand. Until that pivotal moment Nanashi would have killed the enemy cleanly, quickly and without hesitation... but he had stopped. Perhaps it had been the desperation in her voice; like the scream of a rabbit backed into a corner by a fearsome predator yet still determined to go on living and protecting the ones she loved. Perhaps it had been the tears which had slid down her face as she tried to make him understand why she'd had to get his comrades killed. Before that moment, Nanashi had been unfamiliar with the concept of mercy, he'd always killed the enemies before him... but she had taught him compassion. She had traded her life for his by giving him her own sole means of protection. Perhaps that was why he had not shot her that day; he'd "owed her one." Whatever his reasons had been, he'd walked away from the field a little different from what he had been before.

It had been around here somewhere; that he'd left her standing alone in a burnt out battlefield. It had been here that he'd made his decision, the first real decision Nanashi had ever made; to find a place to call home.

Trowa stepped up over a rise in the terrain and looked out, gasping and taken aback with surprise. Crosses. A whole field full of crosses, but they were not the nice neat uniform crosses that adorned all of the battlefield memorial cemeteries that had sprung up in the months following the war. No, these crosses were crude cobbled-together affairs, made of peices of wood poles or tree branches... even what he recognized to be old rusted parts of mobile suits. The graves they marked were not all in nice neat rows either but haphazardly sprawled out mounds of stone. The stones had obviously been piled atop the bodies and a cross erected at the head of each cairn or on many of them the cross had simply been anchored into one of the mounds to keep it standing upright. Clearly not the work of a professional gravedigger.

The chill wind ruffled at his clothing for a minute but he did not have to count the crosses to know how many rested there... three hundred and ninety seven. The exact number of loyalists left in the company after the traitors had turned coat and been killed by him. The exact number that had been wiped out by the Alliance in a sweep of the entire rebel base.

Someone had buried them. Someone had taken the time to collect the bodies of his former comrades and lay them to rest with a decent burial. Their names had even been marked by a crude hand scratched almost illegibly into rough planks of wood nailed to the cross-piece of each cross. The crosses that had no markers on them had dog-tags chiming in the wind. He was touched and comforted, they weren't beautiful graves, but they were better than leaving the bodies to freeze or rot in the sun or be picked at by scavengers. Trowa felt a momentary twinge of guilt; as their former comrade he should have been the one to see to their appropriate burial. Instead he had wandered off and was only now returning to this place many years later. He gazed out at the field where they had died and been laid to rest with mixed feelings; he was sad that they had all died but at the same time the voice of logic and hindsight told him that their cause had come at the wrong time. The rebel company, with so many of its soldiers betraying their comrades, would not have lasted for very much longer anyway and if he hadn't been freed of his obligation to fight alongside them he never would have made it up to space as he had dreamed and so never gotten to pilot Heavyarms and consequently never met Catherine.

His musings were interrupted by a movement on the far side of the field where they had all died. Someone was moving among the graves, picking up rocks and clearing out leaves, sticks and other debris while humming an old tune softly to herself. On this rather morbid anniversary, someone had come to tend to the graves of the dead! There was a small splash of color on the freshly tended graves... it looked like flowers had been placed on top of the mounds at the base of each cross.

_Amazing grace, how sweet the sound._

_That saved a wretch like me..._

The oddly haunting and familiar song sailed up on the wind to reach his ears and he was jolted back into the past. She had hummed that tune to herself, so often. On those occasions when she had perched on the shoulder of his suit while he'd made repairs she had sometimes crooned that soft melody to herself. He remembered sometimes pausing in his work to pay attention to the song, for even at a young age she had had a fine voice and a good ear.

_I once was lost, but now am found._

_Was blind but now, I see._

It was her! He realized with another jolt that sent him spinning back into the present. The person who now tended the graves was the very same girl who had all but put them in it. Midii Une.

_Through many dangers toils and snares,_

_I have already come_.

Trowa felt torn between wanting to slip quietly away without ever having to look upon her, and wanting to see what exactly had become of her in the years since they had parted.

_T'was__ grace that brought me safe thus far,_

_And grace will guide me home._

He was surprised again when the girl, well she had to be a young woman by now, stopped at a particularly well made grave smack in the center of all of the others and started speaking.

"Well Captain, I made it through another year so here I am just as I said I would be," she paused for a moment, obviously trying to think of something to say. She perked up as she said

"We have most of the house rebuilt now. Remember how I told you it got blown up in that war? It's almost all rebuilt now. That's the funny thing about homes and other structures I guess; they can be rebuilt or made anew... but lives, once you take them there's no giving them back. I'm sorry; I guess I shouldn't have brought that up. Hey, if you have the time say hi to Papa for me, I'm sure he knows I miss him. Other than that life's been pretty ordinary, and I think between you and me that I like it better that way. I've had enough excitement to last for my next ten lifetimes. No one said it would be easy, and I suppose that without the hard times we wouldn't really appreciate the times when things are good. I'm going to school now, or well, I'm working on it; there wasn't a whole lot of time to study when I'm busy just trying to survive. This part of the world is still feeling the effects of the wars; there's not a whole lot of food, and the crops haven't grown out of soil that was treated carelessly by the armies that Occupied this land. A lot of us ex-war refugees still live in those camps. I still do volunteer work there, soup kitchens, free clinics… stuff like that; sometimes I feel like when I help others or even save a life or ease suffering that I can feel all you guys cheering for me. But I guess you knew that huh? I just want you to know that I kept my word; I'm leading a good life and there aren't any more deaths because of me."

"That's good to hear," Trowa at last spoke up from just a few feet behind her. He had moved closer in that silent way of his until he could almost reach out and take her elbow. The young woman in the heavy and hooded parka nearly leapt out of her skin and spun in mid-air to face her unexpected shadow. Her eyes frantically scanned around behind her as she backed up a few paces in panic. She looked afraid of him. Then the situation struck Trowa; here she was all alone miles from civilization with no one to hear her scream and a strange man who was more than big enough to overpower her just appears out of no where… in her place he might be afraid to, except that Trowa was more than big enough to take on any one who might want to overpower him. Midii wasn't though.

"Who- who are you?" she asked, her tiny form seemed to fold in on itself as she worriedly kept both eyes on him. "W-what do you want?"

"Relax Midii, I'm not here to hurt you," he said quietly in the same soft tone he used to soothe the animals at the circus when they were restless of frightened during a storm.

"Who are you? How do you know my name?" she demanded, her voice quavering a little in fear.

"Don't you recognize me?" he inquired, stepping forward to allow her to take a good look at him. Midii jerked back at his sudden movement, then studied his face.

"N-Nanashi?" she hazarded cautiously. Trowa nodded once and said

"Actually, I'm called Trowa Barton now."

"You have a name," she said "That's good. I'm happy for you." Her face melted into a sweet smile that chased the shadows from behind her eyes and the strain from her pale face. She really was happy for him, and suddenly he didn't think there were many things in this world more beautiful than Midii when she smiled.

"Paper flowers?" he questioned changing the subject. He gestured to the bouquet in her hand.

"Well…" she trailed off, suddenly a little shy. "It's still winter, not even the crocuses or snowdrops are out yet. I didn't have the money to buy real flowers for them so I made some. I make them new ones each year."

"May I see?" he asked politely. Midii nodded and handed him one from the bunch, the petals had been artistically watercolored in shades of red and gold and orange like a sunset the colors melding and shifting in ways that suggested the pattern of an actual picture somewhere inside it all, the center had cut-paper tines like a hibiscus, the stem was a roll of watercolored paper. It was a small work of art.

"It's lovely," he complimented her. "I didn't know you liked art."

"My father was an artist," she said, her voice sounding a little hollow. "But not me. It's just a hobby; it doesn't pay the bills or put food on the table so I don't see the point. It's not really very useful most of the time."

"I can think of a friend of mine who would argue that making the world more beautiful is something rare and something to be treasured," Trowa replied, his mind drifting momentarily to his best friend Quatre, who loved to see the world in all of its beauty.

Midii gave a short laugh and said

"They say a true artist is never appreciated in his own time. You could bring your friend to visit and I would give him some of my father's paintings; I think it would please Papa to know that someone out there likes his work."

There was a short pause as they both tried to think of something to say.

"So how has life been for you since…" Midii trailed off, gesturing slightly to the crosses all around them.

"Better than before," he replied. "I have a home now, an older sister; Catherine is her name. Friends, good people. It's good."

"It makes me happy to hear that. I will admit that I worried, you know, from time to time."

So, she had thought about him. It was nice to know that she hadn't forgotten.

"And yourself?" he questioned softly. "How has your life been since we parted?"

Midii took a deep, heavy breath and nodded almost to herself as she tried to think of the words to describe it.

"It's been… a little rough, but I've managed. Um… The place I call home was what you could say, ah, right in the middle of all the action. We must have had every single faction in the entire Earth Sphere and a couple no one has ever even heard of ride through there and declare martial law and military Occupations. The land suffered, so did her people. When the villages, towns and cities were left in burned out ruins during the wars, the people that had been displaced became refugees; sort of roaming the countryside in bands. Have you ever read that old novel, The Grapes of Wrath? Well, that's almost exactly what it was like. Camps of war-weary hungry and grieving people, feeding one another, taking care of each other, depending on themselves and one another for survival; the camps themselves could be very dangerous to live in… the strong often prayed upon those weaker than themselves because they were desperate times."

"So you were a war refugee?" he questioned. Trowa momentarily felt a small shiver try to run up his spine. He had walked through a couple of the camps for war refugees; they were not friendly places. In fact not a few of them had resembled prison yards in the sense that if one did not have a net of connections, the personal ability to _really_ not make it worth anyones time to mess with them, or at the very least some heavy weaponry; one could be prey to a wide variety of unpleasantness. Anything from having all of your possessions taken from you, to a beating by whatever gang-boss-posse ran the seamy side of that particular piece of turf, to… Trowa had seen one man gamble his children away to a very unsavory character in a poker game. Refugee camp life was not for the faint of heart, it was survival at its basic level. He found he didn't want to think about how this tiny girl could have survived in one all alone with three possibly four dependents.

"Yes. Me and my family lost our home to the war," she said softly, her eyes were staring off into the distance, seeing things that were only inside herself. "But we survived somehow and now we are rebuilding. How about you? You said you had family, I would like to hear the tale."

"Not much to tell. I went up to space, got a job as a mobile suit mechanic for the Barton Army. Guy named Trowa got shot before the drop so I took his name and his place in the operation, came back down to Earth to fight for the freedom of the colonies."

"So you were a soldier," she pressed. She didn't sound very surprised by his admission. Then again, he wouldn't be either in her place.

"I was a soldier," he confirmed.

There was another pause.

"Well?" Midii said, as she gestured impatiently for him to expand on his report. "How did you meet your family?"

"Hm? Oh! I used a traveling circus as my cover during that time. As I spent time in the circus, I got to know a knife thrower whose target I had been hired to be. Her name was Catherine. The more time I spent with Cathy in the circus, the more I started to feel at peace there, but I still had a war to fight. It wasn't until I lost my memory and wound up back with them somehow that I really felt like it was the place I could call home. When we ended the war, I went back to the people I had come to think of as my family and I've lead a peaceful life with them since then."

"I think it's good to lead a peaceful life… it's important."

"You sound like you feel strongly about that. Last I knew you seemed to be more interested in a 'by any means necessary' approach. But you said you were a war refugee, what caused the sudden change? Why did you not continue your life as a spy? Your family would have been provided for."

"I promised them," she gestured to the graves surrounding them "that from then on I would lead a good life. I promised them and I promised my papa. I've made mistakes, terrible ones, ones that sometimes wake me in the night with my face soaked by tears. I can't go back and change it, but I can try to avoid repeating the mistakes I've made." Midii gave a small laugh, then added

"Of course, sometimes all that does is let me concentrate so hard on not repeating that kind of mistake that I overcompensate and make new ones."

"Anyone who doesn't fight is simply waiting around to die," Trowa stated flatly. "Especially in a situation where lives are made cheap. Your resolve to stay clear of the battlefield is commendable; but foolish. I've been through a few of those refugee camps; they are dangerous places for even grown men who are armed to tread alone."

"I survived," she said, frowning at him. Her frown was very familiar to him. She hadn't smiled much at him when they had been younger, and even when Midii had been partially friendly she had always been quicker to get offended and push him away. It appeared that as an adult, Midii was still prickly.

"Besides," she continued. "My father once told me that as long as you remember someone, they're never truly gone. If that's true then it means they live on in you. The reason leading a good life is so important to me is so that… so that I don't dishonor the ones whose spirits I carry inside of me. Each of the men and women buried under these crosses is a name I carry inside my heart. I have an obligation to their memories to lead a life that doesn't take the lives of others. If some part of them, some of their soul, continues to live on inside me then they will never know peace if I don't give it to them, all they would know would be an endless battlefield played over and over. I already have their deaths on my conscience; I don't want their eternal suffering on it as well. So there you have it, I'm honor and duty-bound to lead a peaceful life for the sake of those whose memories I carry."

Trowa was quiet for a very long time. He didn't know quite what to say to that; he had never really though much about any duty he might owe to those who had gone before him. It could be that in this crazy universe the spy had more honor than he. Ironic that. He studied her covertly for a few minutes, time had made changes on her body; she was taller, rail thin but curvy under her heavy winter garments, far from unpretty. The hair that had been light blonde when she'd been a child had darkened a bit over the years until it was now a uniform burnished gold, a pit more the color of polished brass that shone glossy and thick in the watery light of the sun. Her face had character; she wasn't old enough to have lines on her face but he could tell at a mere glance that she had been through a lot… her expression as a child had been defiantly obnoxious was now steely and determined, likely the result of a lifetime in miniature of defying fate and the world to do its worst and watch her triumph. She always had had that survivors spark. Despite her age she was no more a child than he.

"Midii…" he said at last. "I want to thank you, for seeing to their burial I mean."

"It was my duty," she replied.

"Is that how you live?"

"I have never lived my life for just myself, I live for others," she said, laying the last of her painted flowers on the last of the graves. "It used to really bother me back then, always being tied down with responsibilities and never being able to go where I wanted and do what I wanted to do… but you made me realize what I really had was far more valuable that what I did not have. So, I guess I want to thank you too. You made me see my duties and my cares as a blessing and not a burden, since that day we parted ways and I took your words with me I have been able to live my life well no matter how bad things got, no matter what terrible situations life threw at me I was able to keep my eyes on what was truly important to me. It's because of you that my greatest weakness has become my greatest strength."

Her eyes were so earnest as she looked up to face him directly. She didn't hide her face behind her waterfall of hair like she had as a child. She truly was grateful to him and he could read her easily for she had become open in the intervening years, a lifetime of peace had mostly drained her of her former wariness and mistrust from when he had known her.

"And you've changed too," she commented aloud as she studied him. "I can see it. It's a good change; your eyes aren't quite as empty as they were when I knew you. It makes me happy to see that you're not so hollow. Your face always used to remind me of these harlequin masks my mother used to collect when I was a child. She had at least a hundred of them hanging on the wall; and while they were very pretty to look at, at the same time they used to scare me a little because they had holes that were hollow where their eyes should have been. When I knew you as a boy you had always made me think of those harlequin masks because when I looked into your eyes I was reminded of the emptiness of those masks."

Trowa wondered if he should point out the strange irony of the fact that he wore a mask (well, half of a mask) in his work.

"It was good to see you again after all of this time Nana- er, Trowa, but I really should get back home before it gets dark. Happy anniversary," she smiled at him and stood on tiptoe to peck him lightly on the cheek before she turned away and proceeded past the few graves and over the open fields.

He was left staring after her, one hand on his right cheek where he had felt the imprint of her lips, soft as cats paws, a moment before. He wondered if he should call her back, but decided against it; there was always next year.

"Happy anniversary," he murmured to the wind.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything… Nightheart says this to cover her ass.

Authors note: Here it is, finished at last. It's taken me ten days to write it… what with work, and I got stuck at two parts of it for about two days each. I hope everyone liked it, or at least felt that it didn't suck. This fic, in case no one knows, was written for the third Anniversary of Midii's page The Spy and the Silencer. So, happy anniversary!


End file.
